Our Mission

• Communities have the confidence and skills to take social actions on issues that are important to them and their community.

• Inequality is understood, analysed and challenged by everyone.

• Differences between and within communities are understood, valued and common humanity is celebrated.

To support this mission we apply a participatory methodology. This ensures that the most vulnerable groups participate in identifying the challenges they are facing as well as identifying innovative solutions to these challenges.

Meet the Team

Roisin Cavanagh

All One Collective Member

roisincavanagh@all1collective.org.uk@RoisCavanagh

Over the last 16 years, Roisin has managed and worked on a range of different social justice projects focusing on poverty, equity and equality, and other human rights issues in the UK and Africa.

She has a degree in English and Politics from Liverpool University and a Masters in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies & Sussex University.

Throughout Roisin’s career, empowering marginalised people and communities with knowledge and skills, and promoting understanding between or within groups has been a common thread throughout. It is this knowledge and experience that she is bringing to the development of the collective.

Hilary Turley

All One Collective Member

hilaryturley@all1collective.org.uk@hilaryturley

Hilary is a freelance social researcher and facilitator. She began her career working with refugee communities, and provided advocacy and support to adults and young people seeking asylum over a period of ten years.

During this time she also trained professionals in cross cultural practice and refugee awareness and facilitated a wide range of workshops with young people and community groups focused on personal and social change both in the UK and Zambia. In 2010 she returned to the University of Manchester to undertake a Masters degree in International Development: Social Policy and Social Development and then moved into research.

Hilary is interested in better understanding community relations and social exclusion through participatory research and has coordinated community research projects, conducted evaluations for third sector projects and contributed to academic research projects including a two year EU funded project ‘Roma Matrix’ which explored the impact of Roma inclusion policies across 10 EU member states.

She is a research associate at the Sustainable Housing and Urban Studies Unit (SHUSU) at The University of Salford, and at the Gender and Participation Unit and a Trustee of the WomenCentre in Calderdale & Kirklees.

Beth Garratt

All One Collective Member

elizabethgarratt@all1collective.org.uk@beth_garratt

Beth is a freelance communications consultant. She brings to the collective her passion for meaningful, person-centred communication, her learning from working as a BSc(Hons) qualified Dental Technologist in the private and public sector, and her determination to see universal accessibility to resources and opportunities.

Beth is motivated by opportunities to innovate organisations’ internal communication infrastructures, and using human-centred design to optimise reach and sustainability for the external communications of new and growing organisations.

Our History

All One Collective & Lab was founded in 2015 in response to the increasing problems of isolation, inequality, disconnection and lack of mutual understanding between people in our globalised world.

Written by the collective’s Director and Founder, Roisin Cavanagh.

The existing economic and political systems are inherently unjust and have created an unequal and divided society globally and domestically which has led to discontent and conflict within and between communities. There is little understanding of our interdependence with one another, as well as with the natural resources and the environment that sustains ‘us’. In the current state of globalisation, ‘we’ have no direct connection to or appreciation for the producers of our food, clothes and raw materials.

We depend on the poverty stricken global South to prop up our modern consumer based life styles but the majority of people living in the global North have no awareness of the conditions in which the vast range of items we consume are produced and the often negative implications for the people involved and for the natural environment. Mutual misunderstanding and conflict arise out of this disconnect.

The majority of people facing the consequences of the current global system, whether it is those people experiencing relative poverty in the UK, or those experiencing absolute poverty in the global South, have a lack of understanding of the political, socioeconomic and cultural framework that affects their lives. There is only a small amount of work that aims to conscientise those affected.

In the UK, a lack of critical analysis of the real systems at play leads some people or groups to vilify the individuals and communities they perceive to be different or ‘unlike them’ within their communities or wider society. Whether it is a white working class person with a history of unemployment working in the informal economy or a newly arrived migrant, fear of the unknown and a perceived lack of core common values stimulates prejudice and discrimination and ultimately leads to disharmony and conflict.

The inspiration for the collective came from a conversation with Dauda a security guard in Sierra Leone. We were discussing life, the disconnection between the West and people in the global South but also the growing separation between people living in the same country due to economic disparities, age, religion, ethnicity, gender and other issues. Dauda replied succinctly in Krio “we all na wan,” and so the idea for a collective was born that focuses on reconnecting people, groups, practitioners, and organisations that are currently disconnected by geography, religion, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation and economic, social, cultural and political systems, fear or a lack of natural contact points.

Overview of All 1 Collective

We work to build knowledge and skills to enable people to take social action on the issues that are important within their communities. Our approach focuses on increasing political literacy, the development of well-being and self-care tools and the practical skills needed to influence such as leadership and public speaking. At the heart of all of our work is the promotion of positive relationships between people from different backgrounds. We value the development of partnerships with other practitioners and organisations, enabling us to take new and creative approaches to our work.